Two years since Hamas’ fatal terrorist attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, President Trump’s push for peace in the Gaza Strip appears at hand.
Israeli officials and Hamas began indirect negotiations on Monday in the city of the Red Sea of Sharm El Sheikh on the Egyptian Peninsula of Sinai.
The president exerts enormous pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and relies on the Arab and Muslim leaders to apply a lever effect on Hamas to engage in a cease-fire and release hostages. There is an overwhelming international demand for war.
For Netanyahu, Trump’s plan offers the best chances of quickly freeing 20 living hostages and recovering the bodies of 28 others by withdrawing from a massive military campaign that has strongly divided Israeli society.
The objectives of Hamas are not entirely clear. A large part of his senior direction is decimated and Trump offered the amnesty or exile in exchange for the acceptance of his peace plan in 20 points.
Trump said he expected negotiations to end in a few days, his senior officials saying that discussions are intended to hammer the details of a ceasefire, a release of hostages and an exchange of Palestinian prisoners.
The president said that Netanyahu was “very positive on the agreement” while addressing journalists from the oval office on Monday afternoon, adding that Hamas was “well” during negotiations.
“I hope this will continue this way. I think that will be the case,” he said. “I really think we are going to have an agreement. We are very good at concluding an agreement. And this will be a lasting agreement.”
‘I feel full of hope’
The establishment of a ceasefire would mark the first major break in fights since March. The truce at that time broke for accusations of violations by Israel and Hamas and the fact of not going to a second stage of discussion on a path to end the war.
“An Israeli is very reluctant to admit optimism, it is always better to cover your bets,” Yossi Klein Halevi, principal researcher at Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem on Monday.
“But I realized today that it is the first time, maybe since October 7 that when I think about the situation, I breathe. Literally, breathe. I guess it is the answer, that I feel full of hope.”
Trump gave Netanyahu as a choice but to conclude negotiations with Hamas, telling Israel to stop bombing Gaza after Hamas’ response to the president’s 20 -point proposal on Friday. Trump earned the Israeli chief earlier to accept his peace plan to end the war during a White House meeting on September 29.
“What is different is the level of American engagement and the preparation of this president, President Trump, to apply the lever effect not only in Hamas, but also clearly in Bibi (Netanyahu),” said Dennis Ross, advisor and member of the Washington Institute and veteran Israeli-Palestinian negotiator.
“What is for me is to create a feeling that there is a certain momentum that there has not been before.”
Dana Stroul, who was an assistant deputy defendant of the Defense in the Middle East in the Biden administration, said that Trump’s inclusion – who is a boss of Hamas – alongside Qatar and Egypt helped put pressure on the armed group to come to the table.
“Longtime hosts, and those who have engaged with Hamas over the years, are all aligned in Hamas pressure,” said Stroul, now a main member of the Washington Institute, during the panel. “It is therefore an external negotiation.”
Trump spoke to this pressure campaign during his remarks in the oval office on Monday.
“I spoke to the president (Recep Tayyip) Erdoğan of Turkey, he pushed very, very hard to conclude this agreement. And Hamas has a lot of respect for him, they have a lot of respect for Qatar, they have a lot of respect for water and Saudi Arabia. Everyone is on our side to do this business.”
“ Same old snack points ”
While Trump welcomed Hamas’ response as “lend to lasting peace”, veterans diplomats see Hamas using a standard game book to write negotiations to preserve their own survival.
“It seems that the collage points are back in the future, the same old collage points for Hamas,” said Stroul, “where there is a conditional” yes “, but it is always the details of the implementation.”
Hamas, in its initial acceptance to Trump, has not explicitly agreed to hand over its arms and renounce political participation in a future Palestinian government.
“They are fighting for survival, which means that they do not want, for example, to lay their arms. They do not want to abandon more territory, they do not want to abandon a place in Palestinian politics, “said Elliott Abrams, director of Iranian policy of the Jewish Institute for National Security in America and former Special American representative for Iran.
But a large carrot for Hamas coming to the table is that Israel ceases to stop its military bombing. Trump’s plan also promises to guarantee the release of 250 Palestinians serving perpetuity in Israeli prisons, plus 1,700 arrested after October 7. Trump also offers Israel to transfer the remains of 15 Palestinians to Hamas for each body of an Israeli hostage.
“Hamas is very eager to reach an agreement to put an end to the war and immediately start the prisoner exchange process in accordance with the conditions on the ground,” a senior Hamas responsible for AFP told anonymity.
Israel has reduced its military operations in the strip after the Trump directive, and the negotiators in Egypt are responsible for defining the timing of the ceasefire-including when the fighting ceases, where Israeli troops will withdraw from Gaza, that Hamas will deliver all hostages, the names of Palestinian prisoners to publish and how a humanitarian support will be treated.
The White House held on Monday to issue a hard time for an agreement. Trump had previously given Hamas until Sunday to decide to accept his 20 -point proposal, or to face “hell” in the hands of the Israeli army.
Many “remain to be seen”
Securing a commitment in a first phase of a cease-fire and hostage release contract would be a huge success, but this would only be the first step in what is considered one of the most difficult diplomatic negotiations to resolve.
“The fear that I have is that Hamas will reign, but does not govern directly,” CNN at CNN Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, head of the Realigne project for Palestine at the Atlantic Council in Washington, DC.
Alkhatib warned that Hamas could try to keep light weapons to exercise control over the Gaza pockets and seek to influence any technocratic governance structure intended to rebuild the enclave and open the way to self-government.
“We could examine the propagation of militias and a very low intensity civil war in which Hamas, the clans, this new government, if he has never had an executive force, argues control of the territory,” he said.
Another open question is how Trump hired will remain to supervise his 20 -point peace plan, having appointed president of a “peace council”. The plan envisages an “international stabilization force” to replace Israeli troops in Gaza, the dismantling of tunnels and the manufacture of weapons of Hamas, and a reconstruction of the enclave under a director organ that the residents of Gaza will respect as legitimate.
“The question of knowing if Trump has the will and the skills to sail in the post of October 7 of the Middle East is very improbable but remains to be seen,” wrote Aaron David Miller, principal researcher at the endowment of Carnegie for international peace, and Daniel Kurtzer, former American ambassador to Egypt and Israel, in an article for foreign policy.
“It does not seem to have the patience to negotiate in the souk of the Middle East (market). He has little lever on Hamas. And he may not have the political will to get hard on Netanyahu if the Israelis are reluctant to carry out their part of the plan. ”
Senator Lindsey Graham (RS.C.), a close ally of Trump and a fellowshipman from Israel, initially condemned Hamas’ response as a “rejection”, but then changed his air after the president told Israel to retreat his bombing of Gaza.
“This is perfect. The hostages are first released, then negotiate the rest of the 20-point plan,” posted Graham on the social platform X.
